Ben Myres

Ben Myres is a South African game developer best known as the co-founder, CEO and creative director of Nyamakop, the Johannesburg studio behind Semblance, the first African-developed game released on a Nintendo console, and Relooted, a heist game about taking stolen African artefacts back from Western museums.

Myres studied game design at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he met Cukia "Sugar" Kimani. Right after graduating the two founded Nyamakop and turned Kimani's thesis prototype, a world whose platforms the player can squish and deform, into a commercial game. They lived at home, had no student debt and survived on about $380 a month for the first year. A place in the Swedish indie accelerator Stugan, for which they bought one-way tickets without knowing how they would get home, helped them finish the game.

Semblance, a puzzle-platformer set in a world made of soft, Play-Doh-like material, took about three years to build. Published by Good Shepherd Entertainment, it launched on July 24, 2018, for Windows, macOS and Nintendo Switch, making it the first game from Africa on a Nintendo platform. It won the Excellence in Game Design award at BitSummit and was nominated at festivals including SXSW.

The idea for Relooted came in late 2017 from a family trip to London, when Myres' mother saw the Nereid Monument in the British Museum. Set in a 2099 Johannesburg, the game follows a crew that steals back 70 real African artefacts held in Western museums and private collections. Built in Unreal Engine 5 by a team that peaked at about 30 people, it was self-published by Nyamakop on February 10, 2026, for Windows and Xbox Series X|S and found an audience through Xbox Game Pass. Myres has said its cultural impact was always going to outweigh its financial impact.

Myres matters because Nyamakop has twice put African developers and African history on the world stage, and his openness about the realities of running a studio in South Africa has made him a prominent voice for the continent's games industry.